


People Puzzles

by Jac_Danvers



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Gen, Puzzles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-29
Updated: 2013-11-29
Packaged: 2018-01-02 23:40:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1063053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jac_Danvers/pseuds/Jac_Danvers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>House loves people puzzles, especially among his team. Kutner is an open book, leaving him with one lingering question. One he's determined to answer before House can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	People Puzzles

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own House, nor any of the associated characters. I also do not own Sponge Bob, Toys R Us, Star Wars, or Playboy. Interesting combination, I know.

_Why choose me?_

House loves puzzles. Medical puzzles. People puzzles. Hell, I'll even take a chance and say that he's one of those guys who'd complete a two-thousand piece puzzle, glue it together, and hang it on the wall, just to brag.

Well no, that's what I would expect. And House never does the expected. Besides, I have my doubts that he would ever let  _any_ of us enter his home to find out if that was true.

He's started me on puzzles, though. I'm obsessing over the miniscule details of life. Looking at people, the facts that define their existence, trying to add them up and understand the grand scheme. Discerning the greatest of secrets from the whitest of lies. Not to his extreme degree, of course, but marginally.

I bought a one-hundred piece puzzle. Anymore pieces and I'd probably start dropping them on the floor, and then they'd be lost to the vacuum. I'm pretty sure it had a picture of Sponge Bob Square Pants on it, but I really can't remember. I haven't taken it out of the Toys-R-Us bag yet.

I thought I could replace one puzzle with another- isn't that how it's supposed to work?

When Foreman informed me, along with Taub and Hadley, that House had gotten his private investigator to make copies of our keys and searched our homes, I couldn't say I was surprised. It was, to be honest, the next step in the ever-evolving puzzle that was my boss.

My initial reaction? It was definitely a sarcastic laugh. You could even go to extremes, and call it a guffaw, though I think my grandfather is the only person who uses that word anymore. What could House possibly find out from my apartment? Sure my boxed Star Wars set was probably on the coffee table next to an empty box of Chinese. And I'm pretty sure one of my ex-girlfriend's thongs was lost under my bed, or my dresser. My bookshelf had four or five old Playboys mixed with my college textbooks. It was a bachelor's pad to the extreme- and at thirty-two and a half, I preferred it that way.

House wanted to know the big picture. Solve the puzzle that was our team. Why not let him play his game?

Nothing about this invasion of privacy bothered me, until I overheard Foreman talking to Chase. "He thinks I'm boring," he'd said. "I'm the only one he thinks is boring."

At first I ignored it. Pushed it away, and tried to focus on our newest case. Hadley's girlfriend, lover, hookup,  _whatever_ \- who really cared what she was, all that mattered to me was the puzzle.

Except, the woman in the hospital bed wasn't my puzzle. House was my puzzle.

Why  _had_ he chosen me for this fellowship?

My colleagues, they were enigmas, mysteries. They each interested House, each had a puzzle for him to solve.

Remy was hott, young, intelligent, and, oh yeah, dying. She came off as accepting at work, until you dug deeper, and discovered she was living it up like the world was going to end tomorrow. For her it was. Drugs, men, women, partying- what was the point of abstaining if your DNA was going to make sure you abstained permanently? Taub had a seemingly perfect life. Gorgeous wife, private practice, ridiculous amounts of money. And, by the way, he cheated on her. He tried to hide it, and I think it worked for about three minutes before House was on his case.

Chase has daddy issues. Cameron married a dying man. Foreman went to jail. Cuddy wants a baby. Wilson marries everybody. Sit around in back rooms, pretend to be focused on patients, listen to the nuances in House's voice, and you can put it together. House likes people puzzles, and he likes to share them. He leaves the clues for us to figure out, if we're willing.

Yet it leaves me with a bigger puzzle, the all encompassing one.

If Foreman is the boring one, what am I? There's no great secret to my past, no puzzle for him to solve. I'm adopted, yes, and my parents were murdered. That's not a fact that I'm hiding, I'm quite willing to share that information.

In fact, there's nothing about me that I would hide. I'm open. I'm upfront. I'll tell you your socks don't match, and I'll tell you if you have a brain tumor. There's no puzzle to my existence, nothing for House to solve. And it worries me, because someday I know it'll bore him, and I'll be out the door, without a job.

Either that, or he's latched onto a greater mystery, one that I don't even realize exists. What happens then? Who wants House revealing their darkests secrets? Especially when you yourself don't realize what that secret is?

I know it has to exist out there, otherwise I would have been out the doors of Princeton-Plainsborough a long time ago. There's an answer to this puzzle. One that I'm desperate to know before House does.

_Why choose me?_

**Author's Note:**

> A bit regarding this story, since it helps to put it in context. I wrote this shortly after the new members joined houses team, way before Kutner's eventual demise. For me, when Kutner's story ended, I came back to this story, and reread it. It's interesting going back later and seeing how the story fits in to Kutner's overall arch, at least to me.
> 
> Hopefully you enjoyed it to! Comments and concrit are always appreciated!


End file.
